Peterborough Wargames Club

This was mentioned at the meeting on Monday, but here goes with some details...

Since we aren't doing a tournament this year Martin and I were discussing putting on another Bolt Action all-day game instead. The idea we came up with was the Battle for Berlin game we tried to run last year but couldn't get the room booked. These are my initial thoughts on running it, feel free to chime in with comments.

Basically, this would be a "what if" scenario - what if the western allies had made it to Berlin at the same time as the Russians? Whichever side manages to sieze the Reichstag and the Fuhrerbunker would win a huge propaganda victory in the inevitable ideological conflict to come. Alternatively, if the Germans could hold out long enough, they might be able to secure enough time for their leaders to escape.

Big table (6'×16'?) with Russians at the eastern end, British and Americans at the western end and Germans all across the middle, in defensive positions and probably in ambush. 2000 points per player ideally, though we can tweak this to balance sides if necessary. We'd be using the city fighting rules from various campaign books, and forces would be chosen from the following theatre selectors.

Germany - Last LevySoviet Union - Death of the Third Reich Britain - Into the ReichU.S. - Rhineland

Multiple platoons are fine. So are armoured platoons, so long as they use units available in the above selectors, but bear in mind that vehicles can suffer in a city fight.

The Germans would be outnumbered and surrounded, but this would be balanced by the scenario. I'm thinking of giving them the option to buy the Fanatics rule for all their infantry, since a lot will have it already and dug-in fanatics with assault weapons should help balance things nicely.

Right now, we need to know who's interested, which army they'd want to use and how many points they have available. If you want to play but don't have the right armies and/or enough points please say so, we should be able to provide loaner forces.

Sounds great. I think you've got it about spot on, just need to add a prelim bombardment as discussed. A table set-up like this means we could also be a bit more realistic with artillery. I am thinking of something like keeping all artillery on the back line & as forces approach 'Berlin' & some variability to mirror misplaced artillery strikes, e.g. roll a one & it hits your own nearest unit. This would make people think carefully about using HE. And/or, make all artillery indirect only with no ranging in using maybe 5's & 6's instead of only 6's to mirror miscommunication & severed communication lines. This would also allow me to finally use my 'Long Tom' which I've had for years but never felt able to use :).

I would need to be US though as I have moved my Germans on to pastures new. I have probably between 4-6,000 points US so could field 3 armies at a push if anyone needs to borrow any items/armies plus I could probably field 2,000 points of Brits.

A few thoughts...with so many players on one board (however big) it will be difficult to play traditionally as in a dice from the bag, act, next dice etc. I played in an all day game with two teams & multiple players per team earlier in the year. It was structured so that each turn took 1 hour. All dice were placed in a (large) bag & when one dice was pulled, whichever side it was were given 3 dice to activate. Once those three dice were used another dice was pulled & three more given out to activate & so on. At the end of the turn (the one hour mark) all dice were returned to the bag regardless of what was left & if any were unused. This encouraged teamwork & tactical planning as it meant deciding whose units were to be moved & without planning & communication it would bog down. This worked very well for two sides with four players per side. It will probably need some thinking for the three sides we are considering.

Another potential way of working is that players are matched up & play directly against an opposing player in the traditional way except the board they are playing on will be common ground for all players meaning interaction with other forces & again, the need for teamwork.

These are just suggestions on the play mechanic. Feel free to pile in.

I have some other ideas about actually playing the game such as the treatment of HE which we should be able to model more realistically than on a 6' by 4' table & we will probably want to look at Tiger Fear excluding Panzer IV's. If anyone has any other particular bugbears about the rules this will be a good opportunity to 'house rule' it.

I agree that tiger fear should exclude panzer 4 by this time in the war. The scenario is really two games back to back - soviet vs germans & allies vs germans - so why not structure it like that. The germans would be able to move units between the games/tables. This would make dice drawing more straight forward and each game could proceed at its own pace in real time and no need for a time limit. We could perhaps include artillery/air strikes ending up on the other table by chance.GrahamePS I'll be bringing Americans.

I thought the idea behind the Tiger rule was that the allies thought their was a possibility of a tiger ahead, any tank noise or rumour meant tiger? Which fits for a Pz4, the rule is not used if shooting at the Pz4 and I wouldn't expect them to last long in 1945?

First draft of the scenario rules attached. Note that this is just the scenario, I haven't covered how we'll be drawing dice from the bag so that's still up for discussion.

PLEASE let me know if you see any issues with the scenario, as I said it's still a first draft (well, maybe more of a fourth or fifth draft at this point but you get the idea).

And I agree with Andy with regard to Tiger Fear. It's a badly written rule and I really don't like it but it's all about the fear of what COULD BE a Tiger. If we're using the rule, then we use it as it stands.

I've not read City Fighting rules yet but other than that the scenario looks good.

The problem I have is the selector- I've just been looking at The Last Levy force selector and there is no way I can do a legal force as the mandatory infantry units are limited to Volkssturm squads, Hitler Youth squads and Kriegsmarine squads none of which I have the models for. Closest I can get is a generic platoon using only units from The Last Levy.

As discussed on Monday night, we're still on for Sunday. We're going to try this with half the number of players we intended and see how it goes.

On that note, this is who I'm expecting to turn up. If there's any changes to this PLEASE let us know ASAP. We've had a couple of people who said they were interested in playing but haven't committed, if that's you then speak up now. Especially if you want to borrow miniatures from someone.

Also, copy of the City Fighting rules for anyone who doesn't have access to them. I'll have a couple of books with the rules in tomorrow but if you want them, here you go. Sorry it's so last minute, I had issues with the scanner.